When we think about ecommerce start-ups, we tend to picture this glamorous IT oriented company located in Mumbai or Bengaluru with IT coding developers or tech gurus. However, the reality is it’s just your next door maasi or baba trying to make ends meet through expanding their offline business to the online market – starting an ecommerce business is not that complicated. Most ecommerce businesses operate as a platform to sell goods to Tier 2 or Tier 1 cities through online channels.
All you need to do is find a good item to trade online and you have your own unique ecommerce business.
Let’s learn how to start a ecommerce business without money.
What Should I Do to Starting an eCommerce Business Without Money?
There are some parts that need to starting an ecommerce business. Let us get into detail.
Selecting the Main Item or Idea of Your eCommerce Business in India
The most important and fundamental part of your ecommerce business empire : the item
First, we have to select the main item with which you want to start your business. For example, let’s say that your Chaachi or your Khala(for our fellow Bengalis) makes one great Sandesh. East India is known for the famous dessert cuisine and you believe your lovely Chaachi can rake in some additional rupees if she sells it more nationwide rather than just at Bara Bazaar. The demand for her Sandesh is authenticated by the sell out demand at the local flea market.
The main issue is how do we sell this to more people across India?
The Second Part of Your eCommerce Business : The eCommerce Business Site/Platform
To sell Chaachi’s Sandesh, we have to set up an online ecommerce website in India. However, unless our beloved aunt’s computer engineering degree is in her alamaaree, she doesn’t possess the expertise to develop her own ecommerce business site. She first needs to find a domain website (such as bengalsandesh.com), think of a brand name that doesn’t collide with the Registar of Companies, go to Mumbai’s regional municipal office, apply for a PAN and TAN number and after many, many steps have your own company and your own business website. This can be all carried out by you or your beloved Chaachi, or is there a more simple solution?
At Gruuz, we provide an already existing ecommerce business platform for your future entrepreneurial needs. There are various ecommerce businesses for sale ranging from clothing to dessert products.
If you buy an existing ecommerce business website, this will save you time, money and a lot of effort.
There are also SNS channels, marketing channels in place that will help you and your aunt sell her West Bengali Sandeshs across the nation. The ecommerce business websites up for sale have already been authenticated by Google Analytics and local revenue documentation as steady successful websites.
Doesn’t it Cost a Lot of Money to Buy a Website?
No it is most definitely affordable. It may cost you as little as 4,000 rupees (about 50 USD) to buy an existing website. Gruuz offers a variety of websites that deals in ecommerce, from content based websites to fashion online stores. The prices differ from 1 lakh rupees to as small as 4,000 even 1,000 rupees if the buyer is willing to sell his prices.
This is the beauty of the Gruuz platform; we provide affordable already built and designed websites for the average Indian entrepreneur to buy.
I Don’t Even Have 4,000 Rupees on Me. Is it Impossible to Starting an eCommerce Business Without Money in India?
Don’t worry. We will go into a step by step process to start your ecommerce business with as little money as we can.
Step by Step Guide: How to Start a eCommerce Business Without Money in India.
1. Find a Business Model that Requires Little Capital or Investment
The Indian ecommerce market is expecting to rise more and more up to 8.8 lakh crore rupees by 2025. The compounded CAGR growth rate of ecommerce sales transactions (mobile focused) is expected to be 22% per year by 2025.
The expansion rate of the Indian ecommerce market is expected to grow more and more.
Do market research, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and see what items are of need. Difficult to pay your mobile phone bill? If you somehow can borrow a smartphone, take it to the nearby train station. RailWire, a public wifi provided by Indian Rail, provides you with free wifi. You can access this by using public wifi for free for 30 minutes at 1 mbps speed. Invest at least 30 minutes every day and do online market research of Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of your area of business.
After your initial research, you can formulate what type of business item you want to sell online. This business item must be something that requires very little capital or supply. The following are a few examples.
Labor Focused
Your talent, your skills, your labor is the most efficient way to provide investments without inputting much money. For example, if you have su-lekhan or beautiful writing skills, you can provide services as a very skilled calligrapher. All you would need is a platform to promote your calligraphy.
Gruuz’s various websites provide content focused websites such as blogs that can promote PC and mobile content advertisements to the general Indian public. Providing Devanagari Script to the general public nationwide through SNS requires only your mobile phone, your pencil and some pieces of paper is able through Gruuz with very little capital needed.
Niche Focused Market
Finding a niche focused market is another way to enter the ecommerce market without the burden of buying up inventory. For example currently conserving the environment is the rage with ESG movements being the key goal of many Indian companies. The online SNS movement also reflects this as well. In relation to this, thrift clothes market(2nd hand) or clothes for rent market is one of the upcoming environment friendly markets in India. This niche market does not require a huge bulk of supply. All it needs is an online shopping store, a thrift store clothes supplier and a cellphone to snap the pictures of clothes for sale to potential customers online.
Focusing on a niche market allows for very little capital or money to invest in preliminary investments.
Gruuz provides various online ecommerce business stores specializing in fashion for Indian garments and overseas. After acquiring a website for sale at a reasonable price from Gruuz, we can revolutionize the website to be focused on the niche market (such as transitioning from a B2C business to a C2C business) and utilizing the SNS channels while minimizing the supply route of the original business.
2. Create Your Brand
After you have found a business model that doesn’t require much investment, it is time for you to think of a brand. It may incur some costs. Designing a logo may cost at least 5,000 rupees and sometimes even 50,000 rupees. But don’t fear, there are ways to save money on this. Using your borrowed friend’s phone and the public railway Wi-Fi, go to Google and check out thousands of brands worldwide that is related to your area of ecommerce business. Don’t copy it right away as that is copyright infringement. Think of this step as a brain storming method as your brand identity is the face of your company. Save money up to hire a designer or create your own brand using various items or learn from content websites or platforms such as YouTube in creating your own brand. It may be rough but everybody has to start from somewhere.
As the Hindi proverb says, ‘Jitnee lambi chadar ho utna hee pair failana chahiye’ or cut your own dress according to your cloth, we have to make the best of our situation.
Or use your time to visit Gruuz where various ecommerce business website for sales are waiting for your purchase. Specific information is available for free up to a certain limit every day. Looking up at the various ecommerce businesses and the related revenue they bring in (which can be seen in detail on the Gruuz website) you can see the correlation of a successful brand and the revenue they bring in. If you acquire a website on Gruuz, you can acquire the brand as well. This saves the hassle of thinking about creating a brand and you can also acquire the operating ecommerce business quickly. Ek panath do kaj and you have already killed the two birds of building an ecommerce business and building a brand.
3. Build or Buy an eCommerce Business Website
Next, we have to build our online ecommerce business platform. Using content website channels such as Youtube or going to the public library to borrow books about coding, we can build a shopping mall from scratch. However, the problem is this will take a very very long time. If we are looking for a content based ecommerce business website, we can start a blog that introduces the various items for sale. However in this scenario it will take much time to create the blog content, construct a SNS channel base, find continuous followers and etc.
At Gruuz, this issue is easily resolved. Potential entrepreneurs can buy existing ecommerce business websites at very reasonable prices.
The investment capital of buying a website may sometimes be as cheap as 3,000 rupees. Continuous browsing of the website selling list is key to finding good affordable websites for sale. During the browsing we have to save up to earn 3,000 rupees. It is a feasible process.
This is the same for content based websites. Gruuz provides blogs that already have a steady traffic volume (authenticated by Google Analytics). For example, let’s assume that we will buy a blog that emphasize travel in West Bengal. In between the travel blogs, if we put indirect advertisements for your ecommerce business (notably Chaachi’s Sandesh store) on the blog this will help bring in customers who are interested in regional West Indian culture.
4. Build a Supply Network or Distribution Model that Does Not Require Much Money
Ecommerce business’s success relies on the supply network’s steady provision of goods to the customer on time. However, creating a supply network requires a lot of time and money. However there are various models to handle this.
Dropshipping
This method is asking a 3rd party supplier to provide goods when demand for the goods is needed. Thus you would act as a medium between the final consumer and the 3rd party supplier.
The upside of this is that it does not incur any supply management costs or overhead and thus ideal for those who wish to enter the ecommerce market with little investment.
This is ideal for those who want to diversity their product portfolio but wish to focus on the primary products at the same time. Outsourcing the production and supply of other goods while focusing on the main goods is the main business model of this method. For example, we can focus on Chaachi’s Sandsesh production but at the same time provide beverages such as Lassi for consumers through the 3rd party supplier. Baapstore, Niche Dropshipping are some examples of good dropshopping ecommerce websites in India.
Print on Demand
This is in relation to the su-lekhan expertise example given above. Let’s assume that after acquiring the ecommerce business website or content website, you have uploaded great works of Devanagari Script online. They are a huge hit and many people especially young Generation Z who are finding their roots again ask for your calligraphy in the form of apparel.
Print on Demand allows for cups or apparel to be printed for a small number by a 3rd party manufacturer. When the online demand(and the money of purchase) is deposited into your bank account, you use some of the funds to print a T-shirt with your calligraphy on it.
You don’t need to buy in bulk as the supply is only needed based on the demand in question.
Both of these forms of supply methods can be researched and implemented on Gruuz’s platform. The various websites up for sale comes with a production and supplier network. Many of these suppliers are 3rd party suppliers who can customize their production supply to meet with your needs. Specific information about the website, the revenue, the traffic volume are uploaded in detail and thus the only initial fee that may occur is the buying fee of the ecommerce business website.
The worry of initial production costs, creating a supplier network can all be solved through acquiring an already existing ecommerce business for sale.
5. Increasing Your Marketing Channels
After building your ecommerce business, the problem is advertisement.
Your skills as a calligrapher is out of the world, however no one is there online to appreciate it.
The SNS channels of your ecommerce business that you made from scratch needs maintenance. Somebody has to create content. Instagram, Whatsapp and Youtube feeds have a limit as Chaachi finds it difficult to fiddle with the upload button. What about hiring an expert such as an Influencer? Sure, for 10,000 rupees per video or SNS they will come running. This is a dilemma as you have the skills but not the marketing abilities to promote your product.
If we acquire an ecommerce business, this problem is instantly resolved. SNS channels are up and running for utilization when buying an existing ecommerce business. Gruuz’s various ecommerce businesses comes with SNS channels that are functioning and linked with revenue. Customizing these SNS channels with your niche item while selling the original products on hand will allow you to not only maintain steady revenue but increase yours as well. In addition excess costs for unearthing SNS channels is unnecessary as working ones are already in place. In-depth information about SNS channels can be looked in detail on Gruuz’s platform.
Why Should I Invest in Buying an Existing Website? Why Not Just Sell My Good Offline?
Great question! You can try to sell Chaachi’s Sandesh at the local Bazaar(she’s already made her presence there if I’m not mistaken) but there is a limit to how much dessert she can sell in her region. This is the beauty of ecommerce business, it increases exponentially the demand for attractive products on a nationwide level.
If we want to help flourish our aunt’s store revenue, it only makes sense in establishing an online presence.
The second answer is we must look at this as an investment. If we have acquired a reasonable website for 4,000 rupees and with Chaachi’s wonderful cooking increased the traffic volume ten fold. We also have affiliated marketing in place thanks to the increase in user traffic. The purchase conversion rate is a record 5%, two times higher than the average 2%.
This is when you come to Gruuz as a ‘seller’ of your website. Thanks to your well managed entrepreneurial skills and Chaachi’s expertise in Sandesh, your acquired ecommerce business flourishes. We upload this as a traditional West Bengali centered dessert focused ecommerce business website with an asking price of 400,000 rupees. Wow. We have made 100 times more money than the initial investment.
Thus from an entrepreneurial and investment savvy point of view, it makes more sense to acquire an ecommerce website to manage well, mark and expand your online presence and in the end create a lucrative website to sell as an exit strategy for you and your Chaachi for the benefit of potential other buyers.
FAQs
Q. How do I start an ecommerce business without money in India?
Finding a niche product or a business model that doesn’t require a lot of initial capital is one of the main factors of starting an ecommerce business without money in India. This can range from providing design services yourself online to providing diverse products to the final consumers through your own network of 3rd party suppliers and manufacturers. Whatever the method of business is, an online website must be prepared to facilitate these consumer needs.
Gruuz has very reasonable and affordable websites for sale that is customized to these needs. The list of reasonable ecommerce business websites for sale is provided free of charge every day, and using public wi-fi you can access necessary information. Jahan chaah, wahaan raha and through continuous searching you can find a great website fitted to your needs.
Q. How much money do I need to start my own ecommerce business in India?
Normally it costs 30,000 to 35,000 Indian rupees to start an ecommerce business. This is excluding additional costs such as worker wages, SNS channel maintenance and creating distribution channels.
Gruuz provides ecommerce businesses that already has all the benefits of creating an SNS marketing network, an infrastructure of supplier networks imbedded into the ecommerce business for sale. This may come at a very relatively cheap price of 4,000 rupees around 10% of the average fee to start an ecommerce business. Most excess costs such as procuring a new SNS platform won’t be incurred as they come with the buying of the ecommerce business website.
Q. Don’t I need to have a steady supplier on hand to provide quality goods for my online consumers?
Yes you do. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to invest a lot of money into a supply network. Take is as a step by step approach and wait to see how much your initial consumer demand is before investing into a supply network. Methods of Dropshipping and Print on Demand explained above allows for nimble reaction to low initial supply of consumer demand.
The ecommerce business websites for sale on Gruuz’s platform provide information of supplier networks to potential buyers after buying the website. They can be customized for short term small amounts of supply after the consumer finalizes their purchase. Thus the entrepreneur is not burdened with setting up shop of an over large supply base or contracting with an OEM producer in large bulks. Thus this becomes a very ideal operation for entrepreneurs with little or no money.
